Amanda 00:00 Welcome to Purpose Powered Brand, a podcast for leaders and brands transforming business into a force for good. I'm Amanda Stassen, business and brand strategist, social justice advocate and founder of BIZU Innovation Group. I'm speaking with leaders who are proving that not only does purpose drive profit, but the future of our world depends on it. If you want to grow your business, increase your brand loyalty and not get left behind in the ever-changing marketplace, this podcast is for you. Today we're talking with Dr. Penny Jennings, Vice President of Strategic programs and partnerships at Greyston, whose bakery business bakes brownies packed with purpose through their revolutionary open hiring policy. Greyston is on a mission to unlock the power of human potential through inclusive employment. Welcome, Dr. Penny to the Purpose Powered Brand podcast. Absolutely thrilled to have you join us today.

Penny 00:54 Thank you so much, Amanda. It's my pleasure to be here with you.

Amanda 00:58 Awesome. Brownies and social justice, not the most likely of bedfellows, and yet they've come together at Greyston. And by the way, I would consider myself a brownie aficionado. And these are not just any brownies. These are brownies that are in Ben and Jerry's ice cream. They're seriously delicious brownies. But Dr. Penny, how did they come together? What's the backstory to Greyston Bakery?

Penny 01:24 Well, I'll give you the really short, condensed version. Our founder, Greyston Bakery founder, a man by the name of Bernie Glassman. He was a Jewish man. And he converted to Buddhist, he became a Buddhist monk. He believed in social justice and equity. The Greyston Bakery located in Yonkers, New York, in proximity to the Bronx, New York, where Bernie lived. He would pass through an area of the Bronx to get to Yonkers, in which there was great poverty, and many people asking for money, handouts on the streets and such. And Bernie would say, you know, I'm not going to give you a handout. But you know, he believed in the dignity of work. So he would say, Well, I have a family bakery, and we would love for you to come over and get an honest day's work. If you'd like to earn some money, you can come into the bakery and work today. And that way, you'll be paid for your work. Fast forward later, this was in the early 1980s. Fast forward sometime in the later 80s, he met with the owners of Ben and Jerry's, and we know that they are very, very forward thinking very much engaged in social impact and, you know, profit with purpose, for profit entity with purpose, not only to make money, but to make a difference in the lives of people, particularly marginalized groups. Because of this, Ben and Jerry's owners decided, well, we love your brownies, we love what you're doing concerning open hiring, so let's see if we can make some, you know, perfect, really good desserts together. Then we go into something called the inclusions because the brownies were delicious. Ben and Jerry, they love the brownies. And they decided, well, we can include some of them in some of the ice cream. Thus the brand such as the fudge brownie ice cream, and you buy that brownies are included in that brand of ice cream. Now, with that being said, it took off so big, and then they continued to just get other brands, other flavors that were really delicious. And we also needed to hire more people. At the bakery, we like to say we don't hire people to bake brownies, we now bake brownies to hire people. Why do we say we bake brownies to hire people because open hiring is a really some people will call it revolutionary or radical. Open hiring is a thing that we've practiced for 40 years. This was 40 years ago that Bernie decided to give people an opportunity. So it was revolutionary. And people would simply put their names on the list because he needed to start, after we started partnering with Ben and Jerry's, the need to bake brownies grew so much. We were producing 30, 300 pounds then 3000 pounds then you know, so the need became more and more. Today we're employing about 100 bakers in Greyston Bakery through open hiring.

Amanda 04:49 That's so awesome. And not to mention delicious brownies. I mean, let's say that. But you know it's interesting, unemployment is a serious social and economic issue that, you know, has a massive impact on just about everything in society. But often when we think about unemployment, you know, it's with the lens that there aren't enough jobs to be had. And yet, what I feel like Greyston is spotlighting is that we may have it actually wrong, in that the jobs may be there, they just have a significant barrier to entry. Talk a little bit about what these barriers are, and why they exist today. Because I think that's at the heart of what you guys are doing at Greyston.

Penny 05:36 Well, absolutely. When I say that people were asking, let's go back when Bernie first decided to give people an opportunity. As I said, it was like an area where there was great poverty. So poverty in and of itself is a barrier. If you do not have money to get to the job, transportation, that's a barrier if you can't get to the job, right? If you have a lack of education, that's a barrier, because you don't have a great skill set. Right? You may not have been educated well, that's a barrier. Of course, in marginalized communities, you have a lot of reentry where people have been, you know, have arrest records or have been formerly incarcerated, that is a barrier. Lack of adequate childcare is a barrier. Some people do not speak the English language with proficiency, a lot of immigration and migration, that is a barrier. So barriers are many, it could be lack of English proficiency, lack of quality childcare. And one great big one is affordable housing. You know, that is a big one. Most people that are looking for a job, if you don't have a stable place to live, and you're house surfing or living in shelters and things like that, that's a major barrier. And of course, re-entry from incarceration is a barrier. The barriers are many, there's so many. And as I said, lack of transportation, depending on where you are located. If you don't have jobs in that area that you can walk to, that becomes a big barrier for many people.

Amanda 07:19 Yeah, yeah. And I think what you're, you're highlighting, I mean, there's so many barriers, everything from, as you said, marginalized populations all the way through to well, you're too young, and you have no experience, to and you're too old, so we've got the ageism thing. It's just everything and anything could be a barrier. To your point. I love what you were mentioning earlier, just Greyston bakeries purpose, almost the you know, we don't hire people to bake brownies, we bake brownies to hire people. It's a very specific, meaningful articulation. As a word person, we work with words all the time to craft these purpose, identities and statements, that wrap around organizations to give the meaning and impact. And it's such a specific articulation, it's just an important one, it really speaks to the heart behind the open hiring model. Elaborate a little bit on what the statement means and take us a bit deeper into the overall hiring model. What exactly is it? What isn't it? And how does it work?

Penny 08:28 So I'll tell you about the open hiring model first. Open hiring is, I would say it is revolutionary. It's a revolutionary hiring process whereby, you know, applicants, they simply have to put their name on a list and express that they're interested in working. A list that says I live here, this is my address. If they have one, sometimes they don't even have an address. But here's my name, here is an email or a phone number that I can be contacted at. Once they put their name that is showing that they have an interest in working. Open hiring means that when their name comes up on that list, when there is a new opportunity available, they're going to be called in order. If they're next on the list, they will get the call the call. They'll get a call and the call will say Mr. Jones, we are we've reached your name on our waiting list for open hiring, we have a position available for you at the bakery. Are you interested in the position at this time? Mr. Jones will say yes. And we'll say Okay, Mr. Jones, will we look forward to seeing you at 9am at Greyston Bakery. They come into the bakery and they are on boarded right then, they sit through our two day orientation. And mind you when they walk in, they are fully on payroll from the day they go in. No background check, no interview, no resume, no questions asked. They are given an opportunity, that is what open hiring is. Open hiring says, I'm not going to look at where you're coming from, I'm not going to judge you about what education you don't have, what position you had in the past or did not have. I am going to provide an opportunity, I am going to train you. So with that two day onboarding process, that orientation, they are given a job readiness, you know, one day they get all of the job readiness skills, and they get a tour of the Greyston Bakery. Of course, they have to fill out their HR paperwork. The questions, the only thing that we mentioned to people when they come in, is, are you able to work legally in the United States, that's something we must ask. We do tell them that we say, you know, you will be required to stand this is a position that you have to be able to stand up to 12 hours, there 12 hour shifts at the bakery. And we say that you need to lift up to 20 pounds, you know, because of the ingredients, the bags of products that they use to mix the, you know, bake the brownies, but other than that, we do not ask anything. Now, the reason we say we don't hire people to bake brownies we bake brownies to hire people, is because we are not, the of course, with any business, you want to profit, you know, and that's a wonderful thing. But you see, the profit that we make is to pay for more people. So that we would be socially impactful. We do provide a good quality product. And we very, work very well with our good partners, Ben and Jerry's, and we have other partners as well, that we provide inclusions for and we sell our brownies ourselves. But you know, the idea is more so that we can be profitable, and really have an impact and change lives. And that is why, so it's not the things that we want so much to be so you know, of course, we want to make money that isn't for profit entity, the Greyston Bakery. Yeah, but it is profit with great purpose. Yeah, it is the life changing work that we're doing here at Greyston Bakery.

Amanda 12:29 Yeah. You know, listening to you to a CEO or business owner who's listening right now, the idea of hiring someone without an interview feels a little bit risky. Not only what if they're the wrong fit. But you know, we have human resource teams who are spending a significant amount of time screening and interviewing candidates, what would they be spending their time doing?

Penny 12:54 So I'll tell you this. You're right. They do spend a lot of time screening and interviewing candidates. However, they screen and interview candidates out. They interview candidates with the idea of okay, let's see who we don't want, you know what I mean? The misconception that employers might have is, well, if we hire people for open hiring, we're going to get everyone that's, you know, formerly incarcerated. So that's a misconception. That's really a about a preconceived bias. And that is not the biggest barrier to employment. Most people who are career criminals, they're not looking to come to work at a bakery, where they have to stand for 12 hours. People write their name on the open hire list are really looking for a job looking for the opportunity. Now, what is very interesting and very telling is that the tide has shifted now. And employers, if you read the New York Times lately, employers are looking now to go to prisons to try to find people who are going to be released, so that they can get a workforce. The work force is very difficult right now. And, you know, our research shows, because we have been doing data collection, we do data collection, and we use an outside entity to do that. The research shows that people who have given an opportunity that had been told no so long because of their barriers, whether it was from incarceration, or whether it was just homelessness or poverty, or whatever the barrier was, or they couldn't speak the language well, or we're not really educated - people that are given an opportunity to come into an entry level job, and by the way, most of these jobs are jobs that don't require a high skill set. So they are jobs that you can train someone. When people get that opportunity, the data indicates that they are more loyal, and they are more productive, because they are appreciative of the opportunity.

Amanda 15:13 That’s so good. And then once they're they go through the program, are there opportunities for advancement? How does it work from there?

Penny 15:22 So the first two days, as I said, you get the orientation there, they do all of their paperwork, they're on boarded, and then from day three, on to about a six month period, that six month, they're in an apprenticeship and on the job training, if you will. Nonetheless, they're fully paid. And they're fully paid employees with all of the benefits and all. But that apprenticeship period, lets them see that you know, if they're a good fit. And of course, once they finish that six month apprenticeship, then they will be what we call a line one Baker, a full line one Baker, as they do that for maybe a year or so depending on their proficiency, they can promote to a line two Baker. There are opportunities to promote within at Greyston, and that is what we like to do, because look, we have a finite number of positions. As I said, at the beginning, we may hire 100 bakers at a time, right, you know, have 100 people in the baker level. But of course, when people, as people retire and move out, and sometimes people feel like, oh, I don't want to stand for 12 hours, I want to do something else, Greyston thank you so much for this opportunity, I've been here three or five years, or whatever it may be, but I would love to do something else. The good news about Greyston is that we have a foundation as well, and we offer workforce development training. So many of our bakers come in to afford themselves the opportunity to go through one of our workforce development training programs. We have workforce development, training in many areas. We have construction, we have culinary, we have security, we have facilities maintenance, we have customer care, we call it caring professions, and we have many different workforce development programs. So when our bakers get their opportunity to say well, I would love to do something else. They go through our workforce development, training, and now they are prepared to get another job at another place. Maybe paying them more maybe working shorter hours, whatever they desire.

Amanda 17:21 That is incredible. You know, it's like this cradle to career mentality. That is, it's holistic, it's really, it's beautiful. There's a story on your website, actually, about one of your employees named Dion Drew, he became a baker, then he progressed through the ranks all the way to being a lead operator and ultimately became a supervisor. I mean, just wow, talk about a leg up and a life changed. What kind of impact have you seen the Open Hiring Model, and Greyston's whole philosophy have on the communities that you serve?

Penny 18:03 Oh, my goodness. Let me just tell you about Dion. He's one of our great success stories. And Dion is one of the individuals who is an ambassador now, for Greyston, and Dion would be the first person to tell you, when I came into Greyston, I just wanted a job. I was formerly incarcerated, I had felonies on my record. And I was told no, everywhere I went, and Greyston gave me an opportunity. Dion came into the Greyston Bakery, worked, as you said, started off as a line one baker, move to line two Baker, became a lead baker, became a supervisor. And now Dion actually is the plant manager of our entire operation. Dion Drew is our plant manager. He has done that in like about 11 to 12 years. And I think that speaks volumes to when you give someone an opportunity, you give them a hand up, not a handout. A hand up means I'm giving you the tools that you need to be successful. Dion had the aptitude, he had the integrity, he had the desire, all he needed was the opportunity. And when Greyston gave him the opportunity, Dion soared. And I love that story about Dion, because it's a great success story. Now the impact that Greyston has had in the community. Greyston started in 1982. 40 years we've been around doing open hiring. And what we've learned through the 40 years is how to do it well. In 2018, we launched the Greyston Center for open hiring, which is the nonprofit arm of Greyston, the Foundation. And what we've learned in doing it so well, is that we can now go out and advise other companies. Many other companies have come to us such as The Body Shop, we have partnered with The Body Shop, they have adopted open hiring in their warehouse distribution centers, IKEA, same thing, Red Lobster, many, many other partners are adopting open hiring. The reason we say that we have made an impact in the community is because in Yonkers, New York, we've invested $100 million back into the community over the 40 year period. And we've given opportunities to thousands of people who have faced barriers to employment. Many of them like Dion, become the managers and the leaders in Greyston, but many of them go on to work at other Fortune 500 companies, or other places and have great success stories. So we're proud to know that we've made an impact in our community of Yonkers, New York.

Amanda 21:11 Wow, that's awesome. There's another quote that Greyston has, I think it's on your website, I think it's part of the fabric of how you guys talk about what you do. And it's this idea of transforming potential into performance. You know, every brand has a core idea or truth that they live out or aspire to live out. And that truth is really their superpower, what they are uniquely able to do and bring to the world. Why is this idea of transforming potential into performance, Greyston's superpower? And how does that kind of focus impact business growth?

Penny 21:51 Well, first of all, we believe that people have potential. And that's the first thing, you have to believe in people, we believe that people have potential. And when you believe in that potential, you will give them the opportunity, which is what we do at Greyston, we give them the opportunity. Now, how does that potential transform into performance? When you give someone an opportunity, and you don't judge them, and you tell them, I believe in you. And I am going to train you. Remember, I said, we have a six month apprenticeship. So in that six months, we have coaches, we have workforce specialists, we have people that are walking alongside the baker, making sure that they are getting everything they need. If there's something they don't understand, we're helping them, we're guiding them, we're supporting them. And that support that they need, that's what helps them become performers. Okay, so the potential is there, but when you get the support, then the potential translates into performance. And that's what happens at Greyston.

Amanda 23:02 Yeah, so good. This idea of believing in people, I mean, what a novel idea, you know, we get so sort of boxed in by our conventional ways of doing things. And yet, it's like, let's, let's really look at people for who they are. And they have potential, we all have potential, we just need that opportunity to shine. Thank you so much for sharing that. Before we sign off, we'd like to leave our listeners with two practical purpose power tips that they can apply to level up their business and brand. What tips would you share?

Penny 23:39 Okay, so I would say number one, consider open hiring, because it really works. And what I mean by that, even if you don't go full fledged, and just say, Oh, my goodness, I'm gonna, you know, adopt open hiring, I'm gonna just let people come in. No, that's not what I'm saying. But I am saying, remove some of the barriers that you have in place in your company right now. Let's say, if you have a question that says, Have you ever been arrested? Or have you ever been convicted of a felony? What if you remove that question? Because that's a barrier. You see what I mean? If you have a question that says, you must have a GED or high school diploma? What if you remove that question? If you have a question that says, you know, you must be able to, you know, have reliable transportation? Well, what if you provide the transportation? What if you give them a transportation card when they get their first paycheck or something to make sure that they can get to work, you know what I mean? So it's about removing some of the barriers, consider open hiring, remove some of the barriers. And the second tip, I would say, don't be afraid to take risk, because open hiring is a risk. And some people might say, Oh, my goodness, I don't know, I'm not sure. But look, Greyston has done it for 40 years. We have perfected it. And we have learned that when you take a risk, and you invest in people, it pays off. So take a risk, invest in people, remove some barriers. Those are my two tips.

Amanda 25:30 That's fantastic. And it's interesting because, you know, listening to your first tip, remove some of the barriers. It's interesting that you've positioned open hiring as remove barriers versus, you know, do X Y and Z, which is actually what it is? It's actually removing something that was already there. You're not adding anything necessarily new to it. You're just removing those barriers. And then your second tip, don't be afraid to take a risk. You know, it makes me think about, well, yeah, it's a risk, but it's not an uncalculated risk. It's a calculated risk. And it's a risk that can pay off huge dividends, as you've seen in Greyston. What do you think, or how does a CEO or leader get past that fear of risk?

Penny 26:23 Well, I would say, you know, think about the cost. What is the cost? You know, the cost of turning over employees is huge. The cost of recruiting is huge, right? We know that. So what if you said, Okay, I'm going to eliminate the cost of recruiting, and I'm just going to try this. Let's just try it. You know what I mean? What if you took the money that you would normally spend in recruitment and screening, and all of that, and you put that money into training? So now you have a workforce that is loyal, that is going to be productive? And that is going to stay with you, because you gave them an opportunity? I think that's a calculated risk. I think it's a great risk. And I think it's a risk that pays off dividends.

Amanda 27:26 Totally. You know, it's interesting that you've said, you know, that the people who come through your program are more loyal, more productive, more appreciative. I mean, that makes total sense, right? Because they've been given an opportunity that no one else perhaps would have given them. So of course, there's this fierce sense of loyalty. It's just, it's fascinating. And it really speaks to this whole idea of purpose power brands that, you know, doing good is good for business.

Penny 27:57 Absolutely. And you know, what, Amanda, there's another quote that Bernie Glassman, our founder used to always say, he says, we want people to live well, by doing good. Because when you give someone an opportunity, and they become productive, and they get promoted, and they stay with you, and they're loyal, they're living well. But guess what, they're doing good for the company as well. And I think that's very important. Live well, by doing good.

Amanda 28:47 That's so good. That's so good. So where can people find you, learn more about Greyston? Maybe vote with their dollar because I know that we can buy brownies directly from your website, but obviously through some of your partners, what's your website call out?

Penny 29:02 It's greyston.org. And of course, you just go on to the donate section. It's available there. Of course, you can purchase brownies you can donate and that's where we are greyston.org.

Amanda 29:19 Fantastic. Dr. Penny, thank you again, for joining us today. Thank you for sharing your story, your passion, your wisdom and for being a shining example of a purpose powered brand. And thank you for all you're doing in and through Greyston Bakery to make people's lives and the world better.

Penny 29:36 Thank you, Amanda, and thank you for sharing our story about Greyston.

Amanda 29:41 thanks for listening to the purpose power brand Podcast. I'm Amanda Stassen. If you liked what you heard, be sure to share and subscribe on your favorite podcast player. We'd also love to hear what resonated with you or if you have a guest suggestion drop us a line at info@bizu.co Special thanks to Mark Salam for original music and lead podcasting Production. Lastly, if you're ready to purchase power your brand to grow when and impact at scale. Let's talk visit www.bizu.co. That's www.bizu.co. Bye for now.